The real power of a race lies in its religion; other motives inevitably tend to egotism, disorganisation, and national death, and China is no exception to the rule; the strength and the weakness of China lies in her religion and in its absence. There are few nations who set less store by the outward observance of religion and yet there are few nations with a greater belief in the supernatural. On the one hand, the temples are deserted or turned into schools, and the Chinese are believed to have no other motives than self-interest. On the other hand, the whole of Chinese life turns round the relation of man to the spirit of his ancestors and to the spiritual world, and the Chinaman obviously believes that a man's soul is immortal and that its welfare has the very closest connection with the welfare of his descendant.
The commercial man will tell you that the Chinese are materialists—people who have no faith; and yet with glorious inconsistency he will explain that the difficulty of using Chinese labour abroad is that even the commonest coolie demands that his body shall be repatriated and shall lie in some place which will not hinder his son doing filialworship to his spirit. The whole question of what the race believes is rendered more difficult of comprehension to a Westerner by the confused nature of that belief, and is complicated by the characteristic of the Chinese of mixing all religions together regardless of their natural incongruity. It is hoped that the reader will bear this in mind during the following explanation.
The religions of China are usually classed as three. Not three well-marked religions in our sense of the word, but three elements which tend to merge into a common religion. There are separate religions. A large number of Chinese, for instance, are Mohammedan, and they neither marry nor are given in marriage to the other Chinese; there is a very small Jewish community; and there is also a native Greek Christian village still tolerated by the Chinese, which was transplanted from Siberia as the result of a Chinese conquest in the days of Peter the Great; there are a quarter of a million Christians converted by non-Roman missions, besides a million belonging to the Roman Catholic Communion. But Christianity, Judaism, and Mohammedanism put all together, form but a small part of the Chinese community, and the greater part of China believes, according to all orthodox expositors, in three religions—Buddhism, Taoism, and what is termed Confucianism.
This conglomerate of three religions consists in its turn of composite faiths. Buddhism in China is not like the Buddhism of Ceylon with its agnosticteaching. Buddhism is divided into two great divisions—the "greater vehicle" and the "lesser vehicle." The "lesser vehicle" is known to the world as pure Buddhism; the "greater vehicle" contains many sects, all of which claim that the revelation extended to Gautama was only a partial revelation, and that the truth has been more fully revealed to those who succeeded him. This is called Lamaism, and in China has incorporated much of the idolatry which it supplanted and perhaps some of the Nestorian Christianity which succeeded it; in fact, the Buddhist temple in China is nothing more than an idol temple. Buddha of Gautama is always the principal idol; he is represented calm and without thought or trouble; he sits, the embodiment of peace and rest; but though he may be the first in the Buddhist temple, he is far from being alone; close behind him in popular estimation come two other deities, Amita and Kwannin. Amita, Amitobha or O-mi-to, is held by some to be the father of Kwannin, and is at once a guardian of the Western Paradise and the personification of purity; to this wholly mythical personage is attributed such virtue that the mere repetition of his name will secure salvation. In Japan a sect holds that every Buddhist law can be broken with immunity as long as there is faith in Amita. In China such statements are made as this: to follow the strict law of Buddhism is to climb to heaven as a fly crawls up the wall, but to attain Salvation by repeatingthe name O-mi-to is like sailing heavenwards in a boat with wind and tide behind, at the pace of a hundred li an hour. There is a general agreement that adherence to the strict Buddhist law of chastity, honesty, truth, temperance, abstinence from anger and serenity of mind, is an ideal which is impossible at any rate for the laity. But the exact method of escaping this burden differs in various sects. The most popular is by a "saving faith" in Amita.
If the origin of this deity can be attributed to the personification of a spirit of purity, the origin of the next, Kwannin, is probably from some source outside Buddhism. She is the goddess of mercy, but whatever her origin, she at present represents the remnants of either the Nestorian or the mediæval Roman teaching. In Peking they have a curious image of her which any one might mistake for a Madonna, the truth being that there was at one time an intimate contact between Christianity and Buddhism, when many of the externals of the Christian religion and some of its doctrines were transplanted. The Buddhist temple with its altar in the centre looks strangely like a Christian church, and the Buddhist monks and nuns, with their rosaries and their regular hours for chanting and service, recall the Roman Catholic services; the picture of the Buddhist hell which stands in the great Mongol temple at Peking reminds one of a scene from Dante's Inferno, and among the many things the Buddhists borrow from Christian sourcesare these two ideas, embodied in two idols, the goddess of mercy who intercedes for mankind, and the god of faith in whom the worshipper should put all trust and confidence. Besides these gods there are the god of war and the god of good-fellowship, probably taken from old heathen sources. Again, there are hundreds of Buddhas, or as we should call them, "saints," whose position is somewhere between human and divine, much the same position that the saints occupy in the mind of a Neapolitan peasant.
After Buddhism comes Taoism. Taoism is again a conglomerate faith. Technically it is the faith of Laotze, who was an opponent and a contemporary of Confucius. He taught a dualism which reminds the Westerner of the doctrine of the Manichees. Again, Western and Eastern thought have been confused; Manichees are known to have existed in China, and whether Manichæism originally came from the East or whether subsequently Chinese thought has been affected by Manichæism is hard to decide. At any rate, Laotze did not claim that his teaching was original; he was merely the prophet of an established school of thought. The greater part of China follows his rival and despises Laotze's teaching, yet the dualism that he taught is part of the essential faith of China, and a part which is most opposed to all that is good. He taught that good and evil were essentially divided, were halves, as it were, of one whole. He called them the "Yang" and the "Yin"—termswhich are in no way confined to the few disciples who now follow him. This division between good and evil makes up the mystery of the world—light and darkness, heaven and earth, male and female, each couple makes up one whole divided between good and evil; and so the world beyond is peopled with good and evil spirits, the "Yang" and the "Yin." Obviously such a faith has all the evil which we recognise in Manichæism, and its practical disadvantages are very great. For instance, the inferior position of women is defended as inevitable; they are "Yin." No mine must be sunk or cutting made for fear of angering the earth spirits, for as man is as essentially a part of the world as the earth, those earth spirits will avenge themselves upon him. Even such great men and such good Confucianists as His Excellency the late Chang-Chih-Tung are not insensitive to such a superstition. The town over which he ruled was divided by a steep gravel hill. A Western engineer recommended that this hill should be cut through to facilitate access from one part of the town to the other, and the Viceroy, ever ready to accept new and Western ideas of practical advantage, immediately ordered the suggestion to be carried out. Shortly afterwards a large wen developed on his neck, and, arguing that an evil spirit of the earth, who had originally made the gravel hill, was so angered at the destruction of it that he determined to re-make it on the neck of the offender, the Governor had the cutting filled up, and there it stands to this very day, awitness of the evil influence that an evil religion can have on the greatest men of a nation. Taoism has now but few adherents, and yet there are many Taoist priests, since these priests are regarded as particularly efficient in dealing with the evil spirits in whom Taoism believes so fully.
The third religion is generally called Confucianism, and this may easily lead to a great misunderstanding, for under the term Confucianism two very different things are included. First, a belief in the philosophy of Confucius. This for the most part is outside what we are accustomed to call religion, and we shall have occasion to deal with it later on. Secondly, and more commonly, the spiritual beliefs of those who call themselves Confucians, and who, owing to his silence on religion, have to find other authorities for their faith. Sometimes they claim that their faith was the same as the faith of Confucius, that the background of his philosophy was the religion that they believe, but more commonly they accept it without any question. This religion is commonly mixed up both with Buddhism and with Taoism, but its essential doctrine is very distinct and has great weight in China, namely, that the spirits of men who are dead live and have influence over the lives of their descendants. I was told by a Chinese Christian that a religious Chinaman of the lower class never goes out without burning a stick of incense to the tablet of his father, and no one can go through Chinese towns without being impressed by the number of people who in thatpoor country are kept hard at work manufacturing mock money to be burnt for the use of parents and ancestors.
The missionaries find that this doctrine is the hardest doctrine for Christianity to assail; and there are not a few who, despairing of success, suggest that the position must be turned, and ancestor worship must be Christianised and accepted as an essential part of a man's belief. The logical Western mind immediately wants to know what is behind the ancestor; if an ancestor is to have power he can only have it, says the logical Westerner, by being in contact with some higher power. One of the greatest missionaries that China possesses answers this difficulty by saying that the Chinese mind is not the Western mind; that he does not concern himself very much with remote speculation; he has not that itching longing to use the word "why," which is at once the glory and the difficulty of the Western mind, and therefore he looks at the spiritual world much as he looks at the earthly world; the man immediately over him in the town is the magistrate, and, to use the Chinese phrase, "is the father and mother of his people," and so over him in spiritual things is his father and grandfather. Behind the magistrate there is in his distant thought the prefect—the head of the prefecture or Fu town—a being who only comes into his village life when there is trouble and difficulty; he comes to punish, rarely to reward, and so behind his father and grandfather inthe spiritual world are the great clan leaders whom he worships at regular intervals with the rest of his clan. In civil government there are in a distant background a Viceroy with awful powers and awful majesty, and an Emperor whose very name is so divine that he scarcely likes to use it; and behind the clan leaders are many beings borrowed from Buddhism, relics of old idolatry, muddled up with Taoism; and in the dim and distant background is the Supreme Being—the Supreme Being Who rewards the just and punishes the unjust, Who can in no way be deceived, Who refuses the rain to the sinner and makes the land desolate, Who has power to dethrone the earthly Emperor and to place China under a foreign domination. This great and awful power is, however, so far distant that the average Chinaman thinks but little about Him.
The Temple of Heaven at Peking is the beautiful shrine of this Supreme Being. Here once a year, after spending a night fasting, the Emperor, as the father of his nation, worships the great God who made heaven and earth. The chief feature of this worship is that it is performed in the open air on a beautiful marble dais. No place in China is quite so lovely; it is the fitting shrine of the beautiful faith of China's most glorious days, a faith which though dormant is not dead. The traveller who stands there should remember that the worship which is here performed is as old as the date of the patriarchs and not un-akin to their religiousideals; and if there are some things which are not sympathetic to the Christian idea, they are subordinate. In the main it is the worship of the One True Being.
This faith has no right to be called Confucian. There is great doubt about the faith of Confucius. He is silent about religion, or he refers to it only indirectly; it is no part of his teaching; but his indirect references to it apparently express a belief in a Supreme Being whom he calls "Heaven," a Supreme Being who has an influence on human affairs. He also recognises ancestor worship, but with such a dubious phrase that many Chinese and English scholars have doubted his meaning. Neither is this the faith of all the leading Confucianists in China, many of whom are professedly agnostics in matters of religion, and follow the teaching of Chu; but it is the faith, the ill-understood faith, of the great multitude of thinking and non-thinking Chinamen, and it is looked upon as the State religion of China. Its power over China is universal and yet insecure.
Many ages ago it was partially defeated by the more logical and more sympathetic faith of Buddhism. The fight was bitter, the persecutions were cruel, but Buddhism conquered. Now Buddhism fails. With its failure a vast mass of superstition, kept alive by the sacrifice to the ancestor, once more rises up and stands right in the path of progress—right in the way of civilisation. It was superstition that moved the Boxer, and this it was that lost credit whenBoxerdom failed. Story after story is told of the influence of this incoherent but vital mass of religion. The junk will dart across the bows of your steamer; there will be much whistling, reversing of engines, peremptory commands in English, abuse in Chinese; and when you inquire why the lowdah of the junk risked his cargo, perhaps his life, and put the steamer and its passengers in a state of excitement, if not in jeopardy, the answer is that every junk lowdah is afraid of the evil spirit that is following him, and if he crosses the steamer's bow he expects that the evil spirit, seeing a more worthy quarry, will neglect him and follow the steamer. The head of the Shanghai Telephone Company tells how he is not uncommonly met by some sleek well-to-do Chinaman who is most distressed because the shadow of a telephone pole falls over his door, so that as he goes out he passes beneath it, and that will bring bad luck. The houses in China stand unconformably with the road, because a certain aspect is lucky; a cracker is exploded to frighten the evil spirits away, and so on through tales innumerable.
The world around is full of evil spirits to the Chinaman. Every village has the witch doctor who is learned in the ways of these evil spirits. Diabolical possession is as present with them as ever it was in Bible times. Your hard-headed commercial man smiles when he relates these stories, incredulous that there can be any foundation for them; but those who have dwelt among the Chinese take much the same lineabout these stories as we do about spiritualism. Much is folly, more is fraud; but behind both the folly and the fraud there is a mysterious reality. The faith of the masses of China in the spiritual world has never been encouraged by its philosophers. It owes its vitality to the fact that, as with us, so with them, manifestations of powers beyond this world are real if ill-comprehended, and connected too often with man's evil side. The Psychical Research Society will do well to inquire closely into many of these phenomena. Nothing convinced me of the reality of this belief more than the line that was taken by one of our English missionaries. He was speaking of diabolical possession, and he related the same story which one has heard so often that a man suddenly spoke as another personality; and then he added, "I realised that it was not he who was speaking to me, but the evil spirit within him;" and he went on, "I was afraid to speak to him, because if you speak to those who are possessed with an evil spirit, the evil spirit will take possession of you." It was strange to hear such a testimony to the reality of diabolical possession from an Englishman, but you will hear it from every Chinaman. Those who have read "Pastor Hsi" will remember how firm was his belief in such possession.
Against all this mass of the evil world the Chinaman has but one defence: his father and his ancestor belong to that world and they will defend him; and so the ancestor cult is intimately connected with thisbelief in evil spirits. If the father does not bestir himself the son may come to harm—in fact, the main part of a Chinaman's religious idea centres round ancestor worship; and there is no such awful moment in a Christian convert's life as when he is required to destroy the tablet of his ancestors. A Confucianist cannot understand the missionary position; to his mind contempt for the ancestor only means a deep and spiritual scepticism, an absence of all faith in the supernatural, a negation of all sense of duty. A missionary recounted a story illustrative of this difficulty. He was travelling up-country in China, and his road lay along the same way down which a well-to-do merchant was travelling, and as they journeyed on side by side and met every night at the inns at which they put up, he noticed that the Chinaman eyed him askance; but as the missionary spoke Chinese well, and as travellers have many little wants which another traveller can supply, it was not unnatural that in spite of the mistrust manifested by the Chinaman they should fall gradually into more intimate converse. One night as they were sitting at an inn the Chinaman said to the missionary, "Do you know I thought you were a Christian, but I see you are a good fellow." The missionary assured him that he was a Christian, and did not deny that he was a good fellow. He felt, however, that there was some obstacle in the Chinaman's mind that kept them still apart, and as they journeyed on from day to day and had grown more intimate, the Chinaman said, "You knowpeople do tell such lies that one cannot believe a word they say." The missionary assented to this general proposition as true of all the world, but asked for a more immediate application. The Chinaman continued: "Well, I hope you will not be offended if I tell you the lies they tell about you—lies that I am afraid I believed till I met you and could see what a good fellow you are. They say—" but he broke off. "Pardon me, it is such a horrible accusation that I do not like to repeat it, even though I know that it is untrue." The missionary pressed him to tell what this accusation was, and the Chinaman continued apologetically, "I know that it is such a lie that I am ashamed that my people should tell such lies, but they do say that you Christians actually teach men to break up the tablet on which their father's name is written;" and the missionary realised all at once the depth of the conviction of the Chinaman and the wide gulf that separated him from Christianity. And so many and many a person who knows China best confidently asserts that Christianity will never become the religion of China till it permits and recognises this ancestral worship.
But now a new factor has entered into this problem. Western materialism is spreading its malign influence over China; the educated classes of Japan boldly profess that they have long since ceased to believe in any religion, and they are calling upon China with great effect to follow their example, and so the position changes altogether. Ancestor worship,with all its accompanying superstition, tends to disappear where Western knowledge is taught. The Boxers were not untrue prophets when they told their people that they or Western civilisation, as they knew it, must leave China, and that they could not co-exist. The position is surely one that must excite the very deepest interest. It is scarcely conceivable that a race so deeply convinced of the realities of the spiritual world will, as a whole, accept the belief that there are no spirits. It is equally inconceivable that with modern Western education the people shall believe in the spirit that follows the junk, or in the spirit that is angered by a mining operation. The religious sentiment of China will, as it were, be turned out of doors by Western knowledge. There will be a terrible moment when, with all the insolence of youth, the young man refuses to believe in God or in a devil, and rushes into every wild anarchical and socialistic scheme to satisfy his craving for action.
It is a terrible moment, and one which one sees rapidly developing in Japan and among the Westernised Chinese; but beyond that terrible period there dawns a brighter day when China will reassert its natural sentiment and will accept Christianity as the only reasonable religion that is consonant with modern science and a belief in the spiritual world. The question of policy that needs solving is whether it is wise in the face of this great Western unbelieving movement to treat respect forancestors too drastically. Western education must remove its objectionable features and Christianity might accept the modified form of this belief which is not wholly inconsistent with the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead.
It is not realised in the West how much the modern movement in Japan owes its power and vitality to a native movement which welcomed change. In Japan Buddhism had failed, the one school of Confucianism which believed in change was dominant, and therefore it was a comparatively easy matter to introduce the extensive changes of Western civilisation. There was no religion with roots deeply entwined in the hearts of the people to oppose such a change. Shintoism had not yet been rediscovered and established, and it consisted merely of a mass of superstition, without any literature or organisation. Thus it was the combination of these facts, with the threatening attitude of Western powers, which made all the prophecies of men who knew the East untrue. No one understood the vital power of the movement in Japan. If, thirty years ago, some one had written a book to prove that Japan would one day defeat Russia, people would have laughed at the suggestion, and the authority of people who had lived in the East all their lives would have been quoted to prove that an Eastern race could never fully accept Western civilisation. The prophets were misled bythe precedent of India and Turkey. The Western civilisation is met there by religions whose tenets are opposed to Western thought, and as long as those religions hold, Western views will make but small progress; but in Japan there was no such religion, and in China to-day there is no such religion. The Buddhism of China, like the Buddhism of Japan, may satisfy the cravings for spiritual religion of the uneducated and the ignorant; but the thinkers of both races—the statesmen, the writers, the leaders—are uninfluenced by Buddhism. Taoism has contributed to the thought and superstition of China, but is in no way now an important factor in her development; the philosophy of Confucius is the one vital force in the land.
Its doctrines are in no way opposed to our civilisation; it teaches mainly that a man must be sincere to his own higher nature; it has a profound belief in the greatness of human nature, and a very inadequate explanation, therefore, of the failures of that nature. That man must be sincere, so that the full beauty of his nature may appear, is one of its main tenets, and that this beautiful thing must be decorated with knowledge is a natural corollary. It undertakes the reform of the world, by convincing the ruler of his duty, and through him compelling the ruled to tread the right path, contrasting here very strongly with the religion of our Bible, though perhaps not with political Christianity. All through its teaching there is an underlying suggestion thatsubjects will obey their rulers not only outwardly but also inwardly in their opinions and convictions.
Confucianism does not believe in government by the people, of the people, for the people; but it believes very strongly in government for the people by the rulers. Many of its maxims might be cut out as texts, and hung up in the House of Commons with great appropriateness. It constantly pictures a well-ordered peaceful state, in which the dignity of government is well maintained, and where the working-man shall profit by his work through justice and peace, and the trader grow rich in confident security. In all this teaching it is not opposed to Western civilisation. Confucius advocates the reform of society by the action of the State. Thus the sanitary laws, the education laws, the temperance laws of the West are thoroughly consistent with the teaching of Confucius. Where that teaching differs from the West is that it disbelieves in democracy. Yet Confucianism cares nothing for a man's birth: all men are born equal to the Confucianist as to the Christian; and so Confucianism has, for many centuries, welcomed people of the lowest birth as Governors, if they could pass the requisite examinations, and, having given every opportunity to men of all classes to become officials, it entrusts them and not the people with the government of the country.
In another way Confucianism is opposed to Western civilisation. Confucianism believes intensely in the dignity of government; their classics are fullof examples of people who, at the risk of their lives, defied kings and maintained the dignity of their positions; and this doctrine of dignity is consequently very deeply ingrained in Chinese thought; it is in reality the base of that curious doctrine of "face" by which a man will do anything rather than confess that he is wrong. A great missionary recounts how his wonderful work at Tientsin was once threatened with destruction because a boy from the south of China knocked a boy from the north off his bicycle, with the result that the college was soon divided into two factions on the question as to who should pay for the injured bicycle. The matter was only with difficulty arranged by the President paying for the bicycle and charging it to the guilty boy; but the boy did not mind paying—he minded confessing that he was wrong. There was another case in this same college where a boy had been induced to confess privately his sorrow that he had wilfully insulted a master. He was prepared to suffer expulsion rather than confess his fault openly. He was miserable at the prospect of leaving the college, and when a great appeal was made to his better feelings to say that he was sorry, he shook his head sadly. At last he was asked, "Have you never allowed you were wrong in your whole life?" "No," he said, with a look of pride, "never." Odious and detestable as this doctrine is in private life, I think I have the authority of St. Augustine for saying that it is a maxim of good government that however wrong anorder may be, a superior should not confess his error, so necessary is this doctrine of dignity to government. Thus the Chinese expression "face" has been commonly accepted as a good English expression when speaking about governments.
No doubt it is this sense of dignity which gives such authority to the Chinese official. In many ways it may be an element of weakness. I was surprised to learn that the officials in the Yamen had never been in the shops of the city; it is beneath their dignity. Goods are brought to them and they buy in their own houses. For instance we were told how in Changsha two patriotic bas-reliefs were put up in a shop, one of them representing the Westerns bringing tribute to the Emperor of China, and the other depicting a Western woman, chained and dishevelled, being led in as a slave. Of course our very excellent and most efficient representative, Consul Hewlett, made instant representation to the Governor and the objectionable figures were removed; but the Chinese officials claimed that they were completely ignorant of what was happening in the shops of the town, because they never went there.
It is obvious that this high estimation of dignity makes much of Western government antipathetic to a Chinaman; he cannot sympathise with a civilisation which admires government by noisy agitation, vulgar posters, indecent journalism. Such an agitation as that in favour of women's suffrage is inconceivable and disgusting beyond words to the mind ofa Chinese thinker; that women, whose dignity is such that they should never be tried in a public court; that educated ladies, whose names, in China, must scarcely be mentioned owing to their exalted position, should wrestle in a public crowd and be arrested, is one of those mysteries in Western government that the dignified Eastern mind can never hope to understand.
Confucianism, considered by itself, is not unfavourable to Western civilisation, and its great influence in China will no doubt largely accelerate the Westernisation of that vast empire. For instance, the policy of education is one which has been followed by China for many a long year; all that the Chinese are doing is to alter the object of that education. It used to aim at giving men a complete knowledge of the Chinese classics; now it aims at giving them in addition a knowledge of the West and of natural sciences; and so such an eminent Confucian scholar and such an ardent Conservative as the late Chang-Chih-Tung was the foremost advocate for a Western education.
Again the development of the Press on Western lines takes place rapidly in China, where newspapers have long been known, and which boasts of being a country possessing the oldest newspaper in the world, thePeking Gazette. Translations of Western literature issued by the Christian Literature Society are read with avidity by a race that esteems literature highly, no matter with what subject it deals,and who has no worse an epithet for one of its emperors than "book-burner."
Though Confucianism is not antipathetic to Western civilisation as a whole, and by its philosophy and literature encourages education in Western ideas, yet those ideas will, I fear, be fatal to that mighty system of ethics that has kept China together, and has enabled her to conquer her conquerors so many times. The countries that have never known Confucius are succeeding far better than the countries that have been taught by him. The fact that he always claimed that any race who followed his teaching would be prosperous, coupled with the fact that China, with her splendid resources and immense population, is far poorer and weaker than nations who know nothing of his teaching, is sufficient to bring its own condemnation to this philosophy. There is a marked difference in the teaching of Christianity and Confucianism in this respect. Christianity, by the example of its founder, teaches that the world must be reformed through the individual; and that the destruction of a State, whether it be Jerusalem or Rome, is only a painful incident in the upward advance of mankind. If every Western State were destroyed, the true Christian would only pause longer over his reading of the prophet Jeremiah; but when China, the home of Confucianism, realises her powerlessness in the face of the West, in sorrow and regret she will close the books of Confucius, as the books that guided theState to destruction, even though that teaching was pleasant and beautiful.
A great Chinaman realised that this was the position of Japan, and told me that he did not believe that in Japan any one really believed in Buddhism or in Confucianism or in the new-found Shintoism; and that, as they had not yet accepted Christianity, they were in a state, odious to the Western and Eastern alike, of being without moral guidance in this world. The position of Japan to-day will, in all probability, be, both in regard to the constructive and destructive effects of Western civilisation, the condition of China to-morrow, unless indeed Christianity can fill the vacant place in Chinese thought. Never before has such an opportunity been presented to the Christian world as this vast mass of population included under the name of China, left homeless by the action of world thought.
Those millions of people, for instance, who yearn for a spiritual religion, and who have found in times past some comfort in the confused and corrupt faith of Chinese Buddhism, are now ready with open ears to listen to any one who is prepared to teach them a higher and more spiritual religion. The Confucian scholar who realises the debt that China owes to the teaching of the sage, and yet who feels that Western civilisation is sapping his authority and leaving China without a moral guide, welcomes readily the teaching of the moral philosopher who is prepared to show that Confucianism is essentiallyright and has evidence of Divine truth within it, but that it only errs in not realising that the complete salvation of man can only be accomplished by those who appeal to his spiritual nature as well as to his moral sentiments.
If Christianity conquers China, one of her first actions will be to reinstate Confucius in the position from which Western materialism has dethroned him; but the task would be infinitely easier if Christians could take effective action at once. Every day that passes makes the position more difficult. Every Confucian scholar who shuts up his books and opens the books of the materialistic philosopher of the West, will prove an additional obstacle in the way of the Christianisation of China. The great danger is that the West, ignorant of what is happening in the East, will let this opportunity pass and allow Western materialism to establish itself as a force in China, as it has established itself as a force in Japan. The world is full of examples of lost opportunities; let us hope that China will not have to be added to that sad category.
The best view of the religion of China is to be obtained from the enlightened Chinese themselves, and their views will probably be of interest to our readers. It should be explained that one of the objects of our second visit to China was to inquire whether the Chinese officials would welcome the foundation of Universities in which Western knowledge could be taught, and whose atmosphere should be Christian. When the matter was first discussed in England it crept into the newspapers, and I immediately received an invitation from the Director of Chinese Students in London to discuss the subject with him. I had two interviews with him. What surprised me was that against all the opinion of the average Englishman who is conversant with China he did not regard the Christian character of the University as a deterrent, but he asked one question on which he apparently laid the very greatest stress. He inquired, "If a University is started in China on such lines as you propose, will you guarantee that the teachers are efficient?" I immediately assured him that the learned committees who were considering the question at both Universities would, whateverelse they did, never allow any one to go out as teacher unless he was most fully qualified. He then assured me that he had no doubt the scheme would meet with very great sympathy in China, and that he would give me letters of introduction to various people who would give the very fullest information on the subject. Among these was one to that most eminent man, Tuan-Fang, Viceroy of Nanking.
When I arrived at Nanking I presented my letter of introduction through the Consul, and the Viceroy most cordially invited me to tiffin at the Yamen. With further courtesy he sent his carriage to fetch me. We had a most sumptuous repast, at which about twenty officials were present, and in consideration of my being a foreigner some European food was provided. They appeared much pleased when I assured them that I appreciated Chinese quite as much as European food. We had a most pleasant luncheon, at which we discussed all manner of topics. I was asked to explain exactly the position of Oxford and Cambridge, and when I mentioned that Oxford was over a thousand years old, I had evidently established the reputation of my University far above that of all competitors. The Viceroy then admired the school system of England. He said the schools were "like a forest," and he assured me that he took the very greatest interest in education, and promised after luncheon to show me some of his schools. I expressed admiration of Chinese learning, and he told me it was divided into fourheads—morals, elegancy of style, philosophy, and manners. The respect that His Excellency had for Confucius did not prevent him from admiring other philosophers, especially Mih-Tieh, the philosopher who taught the doctrine of universal love. This was the more remarkable, because at Hankow the very same point had been discussed with some Chinese clergy over Sunday supper, and they had referred to this philosopher's works with considerable admiration, and had declared that his doctrine was much more consonant with Christianity than that of any other Chinese philosopher.
His Excellency then discussed the danger of a modern education. He quite realised the obvious evils that resulted from rashly encouraging Western education without an ethical basis. He said they had observed that those who returned from the West were less dutiful to parents than those who had remained in China. Then we had a long talk as to whether it was possible to assimilate the two and to give a man a perfect foreign and a perfect Chinese education. The difficulty felt was that men with a perfect foreign education were too often unable to write Chinese with sufficient elegance to satisfy the fastidious taste of the cultivated Chinese scholar. All this conversation was carried on at the dinner-table, chiefly through interpreters, with a crowd of Chinese servants, excluded from the room, but looking through a window to watch when our needs required their presence.
We discussed after tiffin the scheme for a University and the relations between Confucianism and Christianity. His Excellency was much pleased that I should take such interest in things Chinese, and immediately said that as I had come all the way to China to inquire into these things, I ought to receive every information. Turning to his secretaries, he told them that on the next day they were to provide scholars learned in Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism to give me all the information that I required, and arranged that the Consul and I should return next day. He then suggested that we should go and inspect the school that was next his palace, and in which his own daughter was being educated.
The school was for children of the highest class, and contained only about thirty boys and thirty girls. He conducted a sort of informal examination which I should have thought must have been extremely trying for the children. His Excellency and myself came first, then two interpreters, and then about twenty officials. When the scholars were examined in Western knowledge, we were asked to put a question or to look at a copy-book; when they were examined in Confucian knowledge, His Excellency put the question, and the interpreters translated to me both the question and the answer. The intelligence of the children was of a very high order, and they were very attractive. The uniform of the boys resembled that of a French schoolboy, though the cut of the trousers showed that thecostume had been made by a Chinese tailor, probably after a Japanese model. The girls were dressed in grey coats and trousers and had natural feet; this was perhaps not quite so remarkable as it at first appeared when one remembers that the Viceroy is a Manchu, and the Manchus have never admired the distorted foot of a Chinese woman; but as they went through their musical drill one could not help thinking that the neat coat buttoned across and reaching to the knees over loose trousers was about as ideal a dress as has ever been invented for women. His Excellency did not fail to make his own daughter stand up, and asked her many difficult questions, which she answered very well in a calm and collected manner. After showing us these schools His Excellency said that we must stop a third day and see many of the other schools in Nanking.
Next morning I was most distressed to find that my friend Mr. King, His Majesty's Consul, was too unwell to attend the interview which I was to have with the learned men of Nanking, and so with some trepidation lest I should make sad faults in my manners without his kindly guidance, I drove up to the Yamen. There I was received by a crowd of officials, among whom were two great Confucian scholars with the Hanlin Degree, an authority on Buddhism and an authority on Taoism, whose knowledge subsequently proved to be extremely small.
The courtesy of the Chinese officials, the charm of their manner, the mixture of dignity and good naturewhich is such a characteristic of their behaviour, makes controversy with them delightful. I do not think any one who has known them can be but greatly attracted by their courtesy and kindness. All Chinese are courteous, but the Chinese literati, perhaps naturally, greatly excel their fellow-countrymen in this charming characteristic. I should add that the two interpreters who were provided were men whose mastery of English was only equalled by their wide learning and pleasant address. One of them had been in England and was indeed a great traveller; he had ridden all through the passes which separate India from Chinese Turkestan; he belonged to a very great family, and traced his descent from one of the leading pupils of Confucius.
We discussed Confucianism first. I set the ball rolling by asking what was meant by the phrase "superior man." The position was a pleasant one; I was there to be instructed, and could therefore ask as many questions as I chose. The "superior man" is a translation of a phrase in the Chinese classics which perhaps might be better translated "ideal man"; at least so I gathered from these gentlemen; and that in the works of Confucius and Mencius his qualities are fully described. With great joy the whole party fell upon the question, and next minute they were engaged in a courteous polemic as to how exactly they should describe the "superior man," and the answer came that he must be a conscientious man, a man very true to himself, charitable, just andtruthful. When they were pressed as to whether wealth was at all necessary to the "ideal man," they indignantly repudiated the suggestion; the "superior man" might equally be a beggar sitting by the roadside or a Viceroy sitting in his palace. It was more interesting when they were asked whether he need be a learned man. There was some doubt and hesitation in the answers; the doctors again consulted with one another, and the answer came, "No, learning was not at all necessary." I asked whether the "ideal man" might be a non-Chinaman, and it was held that he might belong to any race. But the next question was far more difficult for them to answer. Nothing that they had said prevented the "superior man" being a Christian; a Christian might be true and conscientious and charitable. I quoted the case of a foreign doctor living in their city, and asked how he failed to come within their definition of the "superior man," but the Hanlin scholars could not agree; no Christian, in their opinion, could be a "superior man." But my interpreter added that he himself did not endorse this; to his mind any man who fulfilled the requirements should be classed as a "superior man."
We then changed the conversation to the question of "whether Confucius believed in God or not?" I had been instructed in this controversy by one of the most learned missionaries in China, Dr. Ross of Mukden. They maintained, as he told me they would maintain, that the Heaven of Confucius meant Reason.But Reason cannot possibly punish the guilty, though the guilty might be punished by their want of Reason. And as Confucius refers in several places to Heaven as a power that punishes, the definition is obviously incorrect. It dates from a philosopher called Chu. Again the learned men were absorbed in controversy, every one enjoying such a discussion. The greatest number still held to the doctrine that Heaven meant Reason, but a certain number held that it meant a personal God. It ended in the controversy becoming quite heated, and in a copy of Dr. Legge's translation of the Chinese classics being fetched, so that I might fully understand their different points of view. In the end we agreed that there was a considerable force in the argument that Confucius believed in a personal God.
When I further asked how Reason could possibly punish a bad man when he was dead, and how it was that many a bad man, as we all know, died in wealth and prosperity, they answered that after death his memory was punished by his bad deeds coming to light. I suggested that if a man was dead this did not matter to him, and that Confucius' assertion that punishment followed sin implied a future life. When they were further asked whether Confucius taught that all secret sin should one day be made public, there was an eloquent silence, and we dropped the subject.
We then went on to discuss Buddhism, and a pleasant old gentleman leaning on a stick wasbrought up to instruct me in the doctrine of Buddhism. It was obvious from the jocose and pleasant way the matter was treated, that this was very different ground to the philosophy of Confucius. Then, though everybody was courteous, everybody was keenly and seriously interested, but Buddhism was regarded as a most amusing topic; I was assured that only a few women believed in it, and that none of those in the room gave it the slightest credence. They explained to me why the Dalai Lama came to Peking. Two of the disciples of Buddha had been reincarnated, and the greatest of those two was the Dalai Lama, but it was impossible to tell in which baby the reincarnation took place without coming to the Mongol Temple at Peking; then lots were cast and the matter was settled. I had my doubts whether the old gentleman was accurate, but clearly no one else in the room had the smallest acquaintance with the subject; they made a marked difference between the Buddhism of the Lama Temple at Peking and that of the Monastery at Hangchow, which they called Indian Buddhism, and said the district was often named Little India; but when I tried to discover how many sects of Buddhists there were in China, or what was the nature of their tenets, I could get no information from these gentlemen.
His Excellency Tuan-Fang joined us at this moment and asked whether I could possibly read a Sanscrit manuscript that he had discovered, andwhich, from the Chinese notes appended to it, he gathered referred to Buddhism. He also wished to discuss the origin of Chinese characters; he had a theory that they came from Egypt, and he showed many rubbings of hieroglyphics which he had had made from monuments in Egypt to prove his point.
But I wanted to ask some questions about Taoism. I had tried to understand Taoism and had found it extremely difficult, and I thought these cultured literati could give me some assistance. I was soon undeceived. Nobody believed in Taoism, and they knew nothing of its doctrine or of its worship. They suggested that the Taoist priests were often to be found in a Buddhist temple, but one scholar said that that was only because the Taoist priest liked to make a little money by selling incense sticks.
Then His Excellency turned the tables and began asking questions about Christianity. The thing that troubled him was that the Bible which he had read was in such poor style. He wanted to know whether I thought our Blessed Saviour habitually wrote in good style or not. I explained that He had originally spoken in Aramaic, which had been translated into Greek, and from the Greek into English, and then had been retranslated by Englishmen into Chinese, so naturally the Chinese version could but inadequately represent the full beauty of His words. It is worthy of notice how much the Chinese mind is attracted by all purely literary subjects, and howlittle they care about physical science. For instance, when the Viceroy asked me about the sun standing still in the Book of Joshua, which led us into natural science, it was immediately obvious that this was a subject in which these gentlemen took no interest.
We then repaired to a sumptuous luncheon prepared entirely in Chinese fashion. The viands were exquisitely cooked, and comprised bird's-nest soup, shark's fins, white fungus, and all the usual Chinese delicacies. The hospitality of my host made me regret that the capacity of a human body is limited, and if it were not for the excellency of the Chinese cooking, dyspepsia must have been the result. Over luncheon we discussed all manner of topics, and I noticed how extremely sensitive my hosts were to the slightest want of manners. They referred to a mutual friend, a European, in the severest terms because he lacked in courtesy. They discussed also the question of foot-binding. They were convinced that the habit is being given up, and they assured me that it did cause girls excruciating agony. They said the younger generation of Chinese gentlemen would not marry women with deformed feet.
I left the Yamen a great admirer of the culture that could make men so pleasant. If they lacked directness as controversialists, they were most agreeable in their extreme civility and their imperturbable good humour. I shall always look back to my days at Nanking as some of the pleasantest of my life.
It is only just to put in the forefront of the influences that are Christianising and changing China the French, Italian, and other missions of the Roman Catholic Communion. Our first contact with the wonderful work which these missions are accomplishing was in French China, at that very interesting but most pestilential locality, Saigon. We were received with the greatest kindness by the Sous-Gouverneur at the French Government House, a palatial residence worthy rather of an emperor than a governor, compared to which Government House at Hong-Kong seemed but a cottage. Yet even there life was hardly bearable even under an electric fan. The heat was stifling. It had been impossible to drive out except in the middle of the night, and so we were entertained by being taken by night to see our first glimpse of Chinese civilisation, for the Chinese once dominated this country, and have left their civilisation behind them.
Driving back, our French host regaled us with stories of the people, and incidentally mentioned the great power which Christianity has in these colonies. We were much impressed by histestimony to the efficiency of mission work, for the French official is far from favourable to the Roman Catholic Church. He told us not only was a large part of the country round Saigon Christian, but Christianity was such a vital thing that the Church had no difficulty in getting sufficient money to build splendid churches. Next day I called on the Bishop. He was a splendid type of Roman Catholic missionary, with his white beard and his courtly manners. We found several such in our wanderings, for Catholic missions are spread all over China, and have been founded many years. He spoke of the great success of the work, and thought that the hostility of the French Government was in some ways preferable to their patronage, for the personal lives of many of the officials are far from admirable. Their morality would better befit our Restoration Period than the twentieth century. A Governor's mistress was a person recognised and courted by official society, and it was perhaps to the advantage of the mission that in the native mind Christianity was dissociated from such evil doings.
I asked him how he supported the climate, which we had found barely endurable for two days. He replied that the climate was quite cool to the missionary who lived a chaste and temperate life, but that the Government found it terrible for their officials. This may be quite true, but still I think chaste and temperate Englishmen would find the climate of Saigon intolerable. We do not makesufficient allowance in speaking of a healthy or unhealthy climate for the origin of the missionary. If he comes from Marseilles in the South of France, it is not perhaps wonderful that he should find the countries which are not hotter than his native land in the summer quite tolerable.
The history of Catholic missions is apparently to be divided into three periods. The first period terminates in 1742 and commences with the first mission of the Jesuits under Father Ricci in 1584. During this period the Roman Catholic missions, directed by a series of men of extreme ability, endeavoured and nearly succeeded in converting China from the "top downwards," for, owing to their wonderful scientific attainments, the missionaries received important posts under the Chinese Government. The fall of the Ming dynasty and the conquest of China by the Manchus only served to improve their position; they directed not only the Government astronomical observatory, but they even superintended the arsenal and became the cartographers of the empire. They had many adherents chiefly among the learned. Christianity, like Confucianism, had commended itself to the intellect of the country. In pursuit of this policy they endeavoured to harmonise Christianity with the thought of the literati of China; such a process was no doubt extremely dangerous, but they thought that it was possible to tolerate ancestor worship and the adoration of Confucius; whether they were right orwhether they were wrong, while they did it Christianity had many educated adherents.
Another kind of missionary next appeared in China, the Dominicans, who made up in fanaticism for what they lacked in wisdom. These men offended every prejudice of the Chinese; they taught the harshest and narrowest form of the Roman Catholic doctrine. The foot was to be made to fit the shoe, and not the shoe to fit the foot. There were riots and troubles, and the Dominicans blamed the highly placed Jesuits and freely accused them of having denied the faith and of having accepted high office as the reward for unfaithfulness. Appeals were made to Rome. Rome, many thousands of miles away, wavered, unable probably to understand either the controversy or its importance. The heroism of missionaries travelling over miles of sea and being shipwrecked in their endeavours to reach Rome reads like a romance. But in 1742 the matter was finally settled by Benedict XIV. in a Bull "Ex quo singulari," and the Jesuits were defeated—a defeat which was completed by their suppression in China in 1773.
With their defeat the Roman missions entered on the second period of their history. They were no longer directed by very able men, and they became rather the Church of the poor than of the rich. They experienced constant persecution, and, to gain weight and position, they finally accepted the French, who were then in the zenith of their power, as theirpatrons. Such a course necessarily involved that they must do all they could to further the French interests, and the Roman Catholic missions became more and more an adjunct of French diplomacy, defended by France and on their side advancing the interests of the French. It is impossible to say exactly when this policy began. Louis XIV. had sent large gifts to the Emperor of China, but he does not seem to have had any intentions beyond giving countenance and weight to the Roman Catholic missions. Some one pointed out to Napoleon I. the great value of China, and the man of great ideas, always dreaming of that Empire in the East which he was never to found, clearly thought there was something to be made of this. He helped the missionary societies with funds—it is curious to think of Napoleon I. as the supporter of foreign missions. This act came, like most other French secrets of the time, to the ears of Pitt; and he managed that the information should reach the Emperor of China, and sent through a safe channel advice that the Emperor of China should look upon the Roman missions as dangerous and France as a "wicked power." Whether this advice would have been taken to heart or not is doubtful. Roman missions were unpopular in China; still they had powerful friends; but the discovery of one of their missionaries with maps of China intended for the use of foreign countries convinced her of the truth of the English suggestion, and Roman missions were putdown at the beginning of the nineteenth century with a relentless hand. In 1840 there broke out the first foreign war between China and the West, and after this Catholic missions became more and more an appanage of French policy. Whether the French had distantly intended the conquest of China, or whether they merely looked upon China as an outlet for her trade, they used the Catholic missions as a means whereby French interests should be pushed. Certainly the author ofLes Missions Catholiques Françaisesdoes not hesitate to suggest that France was rewarded for the protection of missions by an increased trade.
In 1842, as the result of a war, a treaty was signed to which we have before referred, and in 1860 it was followed by another. Both gave missionaries extensive rights. Can you wonder that the peace-loving Chinaman, looking back on history, finds it difficult to understand why the preachers of the gospel of love should have been so often followed by the armies and fleets of the military races of the West? The coping stone to this policy of propagating Christianity by the power and influence of a foreign nation was placed by an edict which just preceded the Boxer movement. That edict astonished even the Roman Catholics, for the author ofLes Missions Catholiques Françaises au XIX. Sièclespeaks of the extraordinary surprise it was to the Roman Catholic body. This edict ordained that bishops and priests should have official rank in China; that the bishopsshould be equal in rank to viceroys and governors, and the vicars-general and the arch-priests should be equal to treasurers and judges, while the other priests should be equal to prefects of the first and second class; and that if any question of importance arose in connection with the missions, the bishop or missionaries should call in the intervention of the Minister or Consul to whom the Pope had confided the protection of the Catholics. The edict closes with three injunctions. First, that the people in general were to live at peace with the Catholics; secondly, that the bishops should instruct the Catholics to live at peace with the rest of the world; and lastly, that the judges should judge fairly between Catholics and non-Catholics.
This edict can perhaps be regarded rather as a victory of French diplomacy than of the Roman Church. French diplomacy had converted the whole of the Roman Catholic work into an agency for the national aggrandisement of France; the Roman Catholic Church had sold herself to the French Government; her old traditional policy of employing the powers of this world to propagate Christianity had involved her in this position; and she had presented Christianity to her converts as something which, however great its spiritual gain, had also very real temporal advantages. The Church was a great society which would defend you in this world just as it would give you promises of security in the world to come. So she had instituted a regular system by which her adherents were defended in any lawsuit or attack.This interference in lawsuits was, however, not peculiar to the Roman Catholics. It is an old Chinese custom—a custom in which both Romans and other denominations have acquiesced; still it was exaggerated by the Roman Catholic Church till it brought down upon her the anger of the Chinese official world.
It is hard for a Westerner, with his ideas of an independent court of justice, to comprehend the system. A lawsuit is not regarded in China as a thing to be settled simply on its merits. They are only a factor in the decision. The general desire is that, if all things are equal, justice shall be done; but together with justice the judge has to consider the social position of the litigants and their power of vengeance or of reward. The best analogy to a Chinese lawsuit is an English election. If you read the speeches and addresses you will conceive that the whole desire of a candidate engaged in an English election is that justice should be done, but in practice you soon discover that the influence of individuals has to be considered as well. A candidate who always disregards justice is universally condemned; but a candidate who wilfully offends powerful people, who is not prepared to give and take, to sacrifice a conviction here, to push forward a little beyond the line of justice there, is equally unable to gain the suffrages of the voters; and in China the judge stands in the same position as the candidate does in England. If he is convinced that a certaincause is backed by very powerful people who can secure him a better appointment and a higher salary, or who if angered might even succeed in getting him dismissed from his post, he decides the case in that litigant's favour. If, on the other hand, the parties are about equally matched in influence and power, like the English candidate he then considers the justice of the case; and therefore the first thing a litigant does is to try and secure all the influential support within his reach. Chinese officials told me that they have to have their cards printed with "for visiting purposes only" written on them, otherwise they are stolen and used without their knowledge in the furtherance of some lawsuit, and English Protestant missionaries confirmed the story.
Though this interference in lawsuits is a universal custom, its extreme use is peculiar to the Roman Catholics. To attack a Roman Catholic was to bring the whole strength of his mission, with the diplomacy of France behind it, against you. It was in furtherance of this policy that the Roman Catholics were anxious to hold official rank. An official will not speak to any one below his rank; the missionary finds access to the Viceroys very difficult; but if the Roman Hierarchy had this high official rank, the Bishop had only to pay a visit in his green official chair, when, by the strict etiquette of China, he must be received with all politeness, and his visit must be returned. To procure these privileges the Roman Catholics were prepared to sell to France the largeand undoubted influence they had among many thousands in China. There is a certain poetic justice in the Roman Catholic Church suffering from the actions of the French Government at home.
Still justice compels us to remember that they have not been alone in this policy. Missionaries of other faiths and other lands have both relied on the defence of foreign powers and have interfered with the lawsuits of their converts. A Protestant missionary from the Southern States of America frankly defended the system. He boldly asserted that non-interference in a lawsuit would be simply misunderstood by the Chinese. When he was young he had absolutely refused to interfere in a case where a widow was being oppressed, and a non-Christian Chinese gentleman had interviewed him, and after some circumlocution, had remonstrated with him on his hardness of heart, that he, a teacher of the religion of love, should neglect the widow in her necessity. Still, the Roman Church, as in Ireland, as in France, as in Italy, is an institution which is essentially political; and the traditional policy of the Roman Church has been followed in China with the invariable result, first, that when the power of the State is used to promote her tenets she grows strong, and next when that power is withdrawn or becomes hostile she feels the loss of the earthly support on which she has relied and apparently grows weaker. This is, however, only transitory; the Roman Church, for instance, is growing stronger, not weaker, nowthat she has lost the support of French diplomacy, and the missions have entered upon their third epoch when they are preaching Christianity without any special support of a foreign government and are succeeding. For there are few bodies of people in this world who are more heroic and devoted than the Roman missionaries; they have died by fever, have been massacred, they live on a miserable pittance; I was told that one enlightened missionary, once a Professor in Paris University, lived on £12 a year; and their heroism and self-denial reaps a large reward.
Their most beautiful and most successful works are the orphanages which they maintain. They accept any of those children whom the Chinese mothers cast out to die, either because of their poverty or because they are girls. These children are brought up with infinite care and kindness, and are taught embroidery, lace-making, and other trades. No more beautiful sight can be seen than one of these orphanages, with the happy children hard at work and rejoicing as only Chinese rejoice in pleasant labour. When these children grow up they are married to Christians, and from them springs a native Christian population, which has never known any of the horrors of heathenism. As a rule they live in small societies. I believe there is an island on the Yangtsze which is entirely peopled by Christians. The work may be great, but the cost is great too. Many a life has been laid down so that these children might be Christians.
I recall one scene at Ichang. There rises near the town a great orphanage, and when we visited it, we found the French sisters looking weary and whiter than their white robes. An epidemic of smallpox had broken out in the orphanage, and out of 140 orphans, 28 had died of small-pox, besides which the sisters had suffered themselves from malaria. One could but admire the devotion of these women living far off from their own country, tending children whom no one else would tend, and gaining as their reward hatred and misunderstanding from the Chinese. A Bishop belonging to this mission had been murdered, and a lay brother told me that it was because they were accused of stealing children to make Western medicine out of their eyes. This strange slander arises apparently from the desire, which is not understood by the Chinese, to save and preserve the lives of other people's children. Chinese ethics have no place for such altruism. Your duty never extends beyond your own relations, either by blood or from official position. There is another reason, however, for this notion. The Roman Catholics have a system of native agents who are prepared to baptize any child, whether of heathen or Christian parents, who is dying. This system is very well organised. Some of these agents perambulate districts and some remain at fixed points. Perhaps not unnaturally the Chinese cannot understand this methodical search for dying children, and as a reason must be found, and as the reason that seems most probable to the Chinesemind is some form of personal gain, they have invented this slander.
Whether we approve or disapprove the general action of the Roman Catholics—and our feelings are probably very mixed on this subject—we must recognise that they are a very great factor in the change that is coming over China. For centuries they have stood before the Chinese as associating with Christianity the science and the knowledge the Chinese have always admired. The wonderful work done by the Jesuits of the eighteenth century has established a tradition of excellent scientific work which is well maintained by the learned brothers of the Ziccawei Observatory. Many hundreds of lives have been saved at sea by the splendid meteorological service they have organised, and the sailor who cares nothing for Roman or for Protestant walks down on the Bund to see what the Ziccawei brothers can tell him about the probability of a typhoon. The benefit of their service, though great, is not limited to the number of lives of mariners that their science preserves; their science is an object-lesson to the Chinese—an object-lesson especially useful at a time when materialism is taunting Christianity with obscurantism.
Missionaries in the field do not entirely recognise the connection that exists between their own work and the work of other denominations. The man on the mission field sees his bit of work, and realises that it is a failure or that it is a success, but he does notrealise how intimately associated that success or failure is with world movements over which he has but the very slightest control. These world movements are dependent on many factors that must be beyond his direct knowledge, and one of the factors that influence the success of Protestant missions is the wide influence of Catholic work. Conversely every new Protestant mission that opens the door of a school or a college probably tends to augment the number of Roman Catholics in China. The question put to the Chinaman is not, "Will you be Roman or Protestant?" That was the question that was put to the European in the sixteenth century. The question is, "Will you become a materialist or a Christian?" And the answer he makes must be largely affected by his experience of the intellectual efficiency and high moral tone of those he calls Christians. I despair of persuading my Protestant friends that the reputation of the Ziccawei brothers is a valuable asset in evangelical work, and I equally despair of persuading the Roman Catholic that the splendid educational establishments of American Protestantism is one of the reasons why their numbers are increasing by leaps and bounds; but the Chinaman would probably think the remark self-obvious.
How small the differences appear that we think so profound was first brought home to me as we passed through the Red Sea on the French mail in company with a body of Coptic schoolmasters who were going to civilise Menelik's subjects in Abyssinia.As it was Sunday morning these young men came up to me to ask an explanation of the ceremony of ship inspection which is performed with some pomp by the French captain on that day. With a wholly exaggerated idea as to the religiosity of the French they had concluded that this was a Christian ceremony, and when I had explained to them that on a French ship it was illegal to have a service, they were distressed, for they explained that though they had been educated in many different quarters, they were all in agreement on religious matters. One had been educated in the Protestant College in Beyrout, and another had been educated in the Jesuit College at Cairo, which, he added in explanation, is practically the same thing. This statement would be regarded as accurate by the average Chinaman.
At any rate, no one can doubt the importance of Roman Catholic work in China. They now claim to have over a million of adherents, served by nearly two thousand priests, and when one reads that they declare that they have made in Peking alone thirty-three thousand converts in one year, one realises what a power they are in the Christianisation of China. In the West such figures would mean the downfall of Protestantism, but in China such figures mean the growth of a common Christianity which all denominations can influence and in which all denominations can have a share. Remember, though a million Christians sounds a vast number, it is small compared with the four hundred millions who now form the population of China.